Functions of Public Schools in Poor Inner-City Neighborhoods (Book Review Sample)

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Analysis of Actual Functions of Public Schools in Poor Inner-City Neighborhoods as Demonstrated By Rios
In the ethnography “Punished: Policing The Lives of Black and Latino Boys”, Victor Rios writes about the difficult lives of inner-city young Latino and African American boys as they form identities in the midst of crime and violence as well as punitive policing and pervasive stigmatization in the social structures. He studies the lives of 40 young Latino and African American men living in Oakland to deeply understand the interactions between youths in poor inner-cities, social institutions, and their communities. He chooses Oakland, where he grew up in, because of its longstanding history with control of racially marginalized populations through punitive systems and is representative of other marginalized communities in the United States. Rio unveils youth control complex in poor inner-cities, which he implies as the hypercriminalization of youth of color in the United States through systemic punishment by institutions of social control. Schools are thoroughly implicated in Rio’s study as he uncovers the forceful policing, stigmatization, and differential treatment of Oakland’s youth of color. The ethnography by Rios portrays that public schools in poor inner-city neighborhoods are deeply involved in the youth control complex as opposed to their normative functions as learning institutions.
Functions of Public Schools in Poor Inner-City Neighborhoods
Schools in poor inner-city neighborhoods are one of the agencies of punitive social control of young people of color. Rios makes argument that schools are webbed up in the criminal justice system’s forceful approach of maintaining law and order in Oakland. Normally, public schools systems are social institutions of learning and socializing, not in